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- Convenors:
-
Lesley Branagan
(Hamburg University)
Anna Dowrick (University of Oxford)
Rebecca Cassidy (University of Kent)
Simon Bailey (University of Kent)
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- Format:
- Traditional Open Panel
- Location:
- NU-4B47
- Sessions:
- Friday 19 July, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Amsterdam
Short Abstract:
Covid’s threat to modern reasoning and subsequent divisions are located in policies, discourses and experiences of vaccines, polarised into ‘pro’ and ‘anti’ sentiment. We consider the interplay between the promises of vaccines, unexpected vaccine experiences, and Covid’s threat to rational order.
Long Abstract:
The Covid pandemic brought significant transformations in the technologies, roles, governance, discourses and meanings of vaccines.
The technological and political promise of Covid vaccines has left limited space for exploration of their unintended consequences. Dramatic polarisations of ‘pro’ and ‘anti’ sentiments result in disbelief, silencing, and exploitation of unexpected experiences connected to vaccination, particularly in the context of vaccine injury. Similarly, desire to re-purpose vaccines for other uses, such as treatments for Long Covid, has met resistance.
In these responses we find a paradoxical refusal to consider the spaces and ‘residual categories’ (Bowker & Star, 2000) between pro- and anti-vaccination, and limited engagement in the multiplicity of what vaccines ‘do’. However, histories of changing uses of vaccines as technologies, vaccine injuries and medical-legal reform also show that there are potential sites for contesting these polarised categories (Kirkland, 2016).
We encourage explorations of the broader relations between the threat of Covid and the subsequent failures of reflexivity related to ‘unexpected reactions’ to, with, and about vaccines.
Paper proposals could consider:
The effects of complexity and uncertainty upon polarisation, and the paradoxical ‘hardening’ of both lay and professional perspectives on unexpected vaccine reactions;
The temporalities and futurism at play in promises concerning the unknowable (Beckert, 2016), and the consequent misdirection of vaccine expectations and resources;
The interplay of polarising categories of risk and threat, trust and mis-trust, and the possibilities for nuanced understandings of agency and vaccine hesitancy;
The ‘distribution of belief and unbelief’ (Douglas & Wildavsky, 1982) represented by polarised vaccine discourses, and the positioning of different interests (scientific, professional, governmental);
Contestations of categorisations, through advocacy, or ‘citizenship work’ (Petryna, 2004) and the role of narrative in mediating between the ‘counter-factual and factual’ (Maier, 2004) in the context of unexpected events.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 19 July, 2024, -Paper short abstract:
In this study, I set out to retrace the unfolding of the COVID-19 vaccination campaign in Singapore through a twenty-one month ethnographic study about vaccine hesitancy. The larger issue I investigate the making of mistrust in health authorities, that I have come to see as a process of alienation.
Paper long abstract:
This article showcases how alienation can serve as a diagnostic tool to better understand public health governance crises. I revisit the conflicts surrounding the state-distributed COVID-19 vaccines in Singapore, a country that has achieved one of the highest vaccination rates in the world. Between 2021 and 2022, the country gradually deployed a host of “Vaccination Differentiated Safe Management Measures” to encourage/coerce the population to get vaccinated. This ethnographic study provides insight into the everyday life experiences of this population, unfolds how ever-tightening movement restrictions shaped the relationship of the jabbed, the unjabbed, and public health governance. I argue that experiences of alienation lead people to undergo a ‘loss of presence’ in the sense that they question their relationship with the government, health authorities and the people around them. Alienation helps to see this conflict in a new light. Instead of framing this conflict as one of misinformation, public misunderstanding of science, or continuing to ridicule people with the antivaxxer label, we need to take people’s everyday health practices and decision seriously. I show the practices of medical authoritarianism in public health governance can lead to undesired outcomes and how alienation helps us to unveil the problematic relationships.
Paper short abstract:
This paper argues that the categorical divisions that underpin modernity are operationalised in difficult conversations about vaccines, often to deleterious effect. Through attending to vaccines explicitly as objects, I argue that these divisions can be re-thought and (hopefully) overcome.
Paper long abstract:
Whilst Kirkland asks what would happen if we consider vaccines 'political from the start' (2016, p.x), I am interested in interrogating the mechanisms by which their purported separation from politics is sustained. Drawing on 16 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Dublin, Ireland from 2019-2022 (split in half by the COVID-19 pandemic), I examine the ways in which this division between vaccines and politics are operationalised in the everyday lives of my participants in public health and local communities and vaccine sceptics observed at rallies, public online spaces and wider secondary sources. The challenges of expressing doubt, anxiety or scepticism - which might be described as 'vaccine hesitancy' - draw out the depth of what Latour might describe the 'strength' or 'unassailability' of vaccines. I move that this strength can be conceptualised as resting on a series of a-priori categorical separations (politics / science, facts / values, nature / culture, technology / society), deeply rooted in modernist ontologies and mobilised at scale in the present, past and future of vaccines. This is particularly notable given the strength of condemnation expressed in labels used to describe seeming ‘anti-vaxxers’ -‘reality denial’, ‘science denier’ and even ‘child-murderers’. These moral, epistemological, political and even ontological divisions may seem insurmountable and deeply painful, causing distress to families who worry they’ve ‘lost’ loved ones over disputes about vaccination. STS and anthropological approaches propose to translate these at once real and conceptual distinctions into new ontological terrain which opens new possibilities for understanding emerging situations around vaccines.
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines how Russian-speaking individuals with Soviet or post-Soviet backgrounds in Germany use various "lifehacks" to circumvent the country's mandatory Covid-19 vaccination policy.
Paper long abstract:
The mandatory Covid-19 vaccination policy in Germany has ignited a debate over democracy and civil liberties. This decision has prompted a discussion on the restriction of rights and individual freedoms, resonating beyond just vaccine sceptics.
My research centres on individuals from the Russian-speaking community with a Soviet or post-Soviet background currently residing in Germany. The data I have collected indicates a prevalent low level of trust among this group in the social system and the government. Such distrust may be understood as a rational adaptation strategy to frequent crises and uncertainties, leading to the habitual circumvention of formal rules - a concept known as "mētis" (Scott 1999). This way of adaptation also contributes to vaccine hesitancy.
Through interviews, participants shared various tactics (Certeau 1984), referred to as “lifehacks”, for bypassing vaccination regulations in Germany. These lifehacks range from presenting counterfeit test results to employing specialised compresses believed to neutralise the vaccine's effect. I argue that these actions cannot be simply categorised as pro- or anti-vaccine, or as pro- or anti-government. Instead, they reflect a complex and multifaceted set of beliefs and meanings that demand nuanced analysis.
In my paper, I aim to explore the lifehacks of vaccine sceptics in response to Germany's mandatory Covid-19 vaccination policy. Specifically, I intend to investigate the underlying world of meanings behind these tactics.
Paper short abstract:
My Paper Examines the public discourse on COVID-19 vaccinations in Germany. Through the lens of moral anthropology, it looks at the discursive structure and asks about the implementation of ethical regimes in public health policy
Paper long abstract:
The discourse surrounding COVID-19 vaccination in Germany is characterized by a profound dichotomy. It oscillates between viewing vaccinations as the societal savior from a threatening disease to perceiving them as a technology entangled in government conspiracies, potentially harming the individual's freedom. This complex narrative is deeply embedded in the biopolitics of the state and the bio-governmentality of the people during times of crisis.
My research delves into the concept of "regimes of living," exploring the heterogeneous and unstable configuration of norms employed in public health communication. Drawing inspiration from Lakoff and Collier, I aim to unravel how ethical regimes and answers to the question of how one should live are interwoven with the discourse on vaccinations.
Leveraging a comprehensive dataset comprising over a hundred newspaper articles, talk show transcripts, and media posts, my discourse analysis identifies moral categories associated with vaccination. The findings illuminate the terms used to discuss vaccinations and reveal the diverse voices shaping conversations about vaccination security or side effects.
Taking a moral anthropology approach (Laidlaw), I extend my investigation beyond polarized discussions by incorporating ethnographic data from medical practitioners and post-vaccination patients. This research not only highlights existing moral categories and communities surrounding vaccinations but also aims to contribute to a more engaged anthropology, exploring how we can shape future discourses on vaccination.
Paper short abstract:
This presentation conceptualizes COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in the Philippines as rooted in modern-day imaginaries of authoritarianism. It reflects on the ways health interventions are communicated and delivered; and on the fluctuating notions of ‘expertise’, ‘science’, and ‘citizenship’.
Paper long abstract:
My presentation uses the case of the Philippines to show how hesitancy toward COVID-19 vaccines has been fuelled by their figurations in modern-day imaginaries of authoritarianism. Drawing from in-depth interviews conducted from August to November 2023 with individuals who identified as vaccine-hesitant, I conceptualize the aforementioned imaginaries through three aspects that speak of people’s lived experiences in the country during the COVID-19 pandemic. First, I interrogate the widespread use of vaccination cards or passports, which, while never mandated by law, ended up dictating the (im)possibilities of mobility, sociality, employment, and in extreme cases, people’s very survival. Second, I examine the implementation of the immunization campaign itself, in which discriminatory differences could be gleaned from the experiences of less-privileged communities, echoing the larger, authoritarian nature of the government and its punitive policies. Finally, I situate ‘vaccine authoritarianism’ within people’s consumption practices of scientific and alternative information, their general distrust toward institutions, and imaginations of vaccinations as a transnational, hegemonic tactic intended to strip individuals of their bodily sovereignty. I conclude by reflecting on the ways vaccination campaigns—and similar, large-scale health interventions—have been, and could be better, communicated and delivered; and on the fluctuating notions of ‘expertise’, ‘science’, and ‘citizenship’ as filtered through my interlocutors’ experiences.
Paper short abstract:
The clinical trial of a COVID vaccine is imbued with the polarization of unknowing/uncertainty/skepticism and knowing/promise/hope. In the participants’ embodiment of biotechnology, they materialize this tension in their bodies while mRNA-biotechnology makes their immune systems “response-able”.
Paper long abstract:
Following the panel’s invitation to inquire into the “multiplicity of what vaccines ‘do’”, I inquire ‘how culture gets under the skin’ (Niewöhner et al). That is: framed in cultural anthropological STS and an ethnographic/praxiographic framework, I seek to understand how an mRNA-based vaccine constitutes bodies, subjects, and socialities in the face of pending pandemic threat. In a placebo-controlled clinical trial that tested the safety, reactogenicity, and immunogenicity of a first-in-human mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine, I have analyzed an emerging biotechnology, the efficacy and effects of which were, at the time, not known but furthermore a sociotechnical knowledge practice ‘in the making’. My inquiry unboxes the myriad practices that are employed to produce reliable data on the novel vaccine, engender and distribute immunities and ‘response-able’ bodies, and, eventually, aim to underscore the trustworthiness of mRNA vaccination against the background of high levels of uncertainty and skepticism (in regards the course of the pandemic and the efficacy of COVID vaccines) on the one hand, and of hope and promise (in regards the merits of mRNA technology from saving the world of raging pandemic to curing cancer) on the other. In this paper I argue that this polarization not only constitutes an active and relevant arena of (ethical) negotiation within the clinical practices and thus has significant influence on the trial, but is furthermore actively engaged in the participants’ embodiment of biotechnology as it materializes in their bodies, and in the ways mRNA-biotechnology makes their immune systems “response-able” (Haraway).